What should I do?

[Rakdos]

I am currently in my second year of my schools Microsoft-heavy networking program. I'll have an Associates in Networking Administration in the spring. I will be coming back for 2 more years and am at an impasse on what to go for.

 

 

I really dislike the networking programs here because they are Microsoft Server heavy and I don't want to have skills that are a dime a dozen. I can either get my Bachelors in Networking Administration and be locked into the Windows Server/ Active Directory family of products, or get a degree in programming and most likely not be subject to any kind of "vendor lock-in" with my skills. So I am Asking for advice from the people who know more about this than I do.

[ydoaPs]

You can be a dominatrix.

[bascule]

I guess I'm biased being a Unix junkie. I've done my fair share of development with the Win32 API which does have a lot of nice features that many environments are just catching up on.

 

To a certain extent I like the .NET CLR as a platform (particularly since it has multiple viable implementations with Mono, and Mono is free software)

 

I've also been a reluctant proponent of certain Microsoft tools. I've maintained ActiveDirectory-based networks of Windows machines and administered Exchange.

 

All that said: I hate Microsoft shops. I hate the mentality. The software development approaches are rather old, the tools have the "too many cooks" feeling, the interfaces all reek of design by committee, and all in all everything has the feel of too much needless complexity aimed at larger teams of stupider people. It's similar to what you get in Java communities, although I feel that Microsoft in general does a better job (but locks you into their platform)

 

I'm a big fan of community developed software that begins with a coherent central concept advocated by a single person or small group of core contributors and goes from there. I'm a fan of small, smart teams which are willing to learn a more abstract platform with a steep learning curve that lets them get stuff done more quickly.

 

I also feel out of place outside a *IX environment and hate complex IDEs. The editors I use are TextMate, vim, and emacs, all of which give you many of the same features as IDEs (especially emacs) without the obtrusiveness and a central focus on being a good text editor. These tools all echo what I said above: they all have steeper learning curves (with the exception of TextMate) than most editors but allow you to be more productive.

 

If I were you, I'd investigate *IX and open, community-developed platforms, APIs, and standards, and see if you think those fit you better than Microsoft blub. It sounds like you're already expressing some discomfort with Microsoft's dogfood, which may be an indicator you're ready to move on to something better.

[Pangloss]

I am currently in my second year of my schools Microsoft-heavy networking program. I'll have an Associates in Networking Administration in the spring. I will be coming back for 2 more years and am at an impasse on what to go for.

 

 

I really dislike the networking programs here because they are Microsoft Server heavy and I don't want to have skills that are a dime a dozen. I can either get my Bachelors in Networking Administration and be locked into the Windows Server/ Active Directory family of products, or get a degree in programming and most likely not be subject to any kind of "vendor lock-in" with my skills. So I am Asking for advice from the people who know more about this than I do.

 

I'm a teacher in such a school. It's a small university that has an accredited bachelor's program in information technology, and all of our courses use Microsoft software almost exclusively -- networking, programming and databasing (the obvious exception being our forensics program). So I have a bias here, but I also have recently been through the exact same process that you're going through -- as a student! So I'll toss out my opinion and you can judge it for what it's worth. (That's what we're here for, right?)

 

I got my bachelor's at the same school where I'm teaching. My background was about half Macintosh administration, about half PC/Microsoft, and a smattering of UNIX/Linux, over about a 20-year span, from administration to product management and consulting. While working on my BIT I had much the same concern that you have -- is my degree going to "lock me in" to only understanding and being able to work with Microsoft products? Am I getting the "bigger picture"?

 

While I can't speak to your specific school, the thing you have to understand is that you're getting a Bachelor's degree. You are not there to get industry certification training! You're not there to learn "the Microsoft way"! If your school is too focused in that direction (and as I say I can't address that point), then the school may be doing something wrong. But the fact that they're using Microsoft materials does not necessarily stand in the way of achieving the goal of making you a well-rounded, well-educated Information Technology worker.

 

For me the actual proof of this came when I went to attempt my Masters degree in Computer Information Systems (a wider and more diverse subject, admittedly a step down the intellectual ladder from Computer Science, but still a far cry above a management or educational degree). I chose to do this at a traditional, non-profit, extremely large and well-known university. I did this in part because I wanted to validate my first degree in the minds of those who might doubt it due to the source. But I was very concerned that my education would be insufficient to handle the material that was expected of me in graduate school.

 

I need not have been concerned. I did 16 courses in one year and had ten As in a row before I stumbled on a B. More to the point, I had no trouble understanding ANY of the material, in spite of the fact that not one single course used Microsoft tools or languages. Everything was Java, Linux, etc. And my experience with Java prior to the program was really small -- I had to take a prerequisite course in Java programming, but that would have been the case if I had, say, gotten my Bachelor's twenty years earlier at a traditional school (as was the case with many of my classmates).

 

Recently I started working on a PhD at that same highly respected institution in a prestigious security program. My classmates include employees of the Pentagon, the National Security Agency, the FBI, IBM Research, and, ironically, Microsoft. Intimidating! But also thrilling and challenging.

 

But again, I don't know your school, and I don't know your personal level of knowledge or your experiences, and I don't know that your results will be like mine. I don't know if, for example, there might have been times when I saw a larger concept than what an instructor in that BIT program was telling me -- that could well have happened without my realizing it. Certainly some number of my classmates must have fallen behind/below my level of understanding and achievement -- that's just basic statistics, even if I were only an average student.

 

But I think it's reasonable to speculate that you may be unduly concerned. It is possible to teach concepts with Microsoft materials without indoctrinating students and turning them into Microsoft automatons. It happens every day.

 

One thing is for certain -- the fact that you're asking these questions can't be a bad thing. You're right to be concerned and you're right to be paying attention to your education. Keep doing that. It cannot help but pay off for you.

 

Good luck!